O Elo Perdido

As a child of the 70's I watched this show religiously! It use to scare me to death every time I saw the dinosaurs or the Sleestak! I recently saw an episode and it brought back so many wonderful childhood memories when I would get up early on Saturday mornings just to watch Marshall, Will and Holly! Oh yea, can't forget the Sleestak and Chaka!

NBC would be proud of the Fact that this show was most definitely Must See TV for me in the 70's. I absolutely Looooovvvvveeeed Kathy Coleman as Holly. Wesley Eure (also Mike Horton on Day's of our Lives at the time) sang the title song.

I felt it had great special effects with the stop motion animation on the dinosaur scenes. Although recently On VH1's 70's tribute, I saw some scenes, in pretty bad video chroma-key.

Easily the best Kroft show. Remember, HR Puffenstuff (for crying out loud.) I would hang up on anyone who called me when LoTL was on. In season 3 when Chaka started speaking English and Spencer Mulligan was gone the show went straight into the crapper. But that Kathy Coleman. Love her, Love her, Love her! I last saw her on TV in an Arthur Treachers Advertisement, (God give me strength.) Good times, fer sure. According to imdb she hasn't acted since and tribute sites say the same.

Shame, she was HOT!

I used to argue with my brother over this show. I wanted to watch 'Valley of the Dinosaurs' and he wanted to watch this one. To tell the truth, he was in the right, and I never did watch Valley on a regular basis.

It still has some corn to it, the acting was over the top from all three players, but I just took it that they took after their father. This was about the only show that it never bothered me that there were unanswered questions about things that happened, like the pylons, the skylons and sleestax (the way it was written on the wall). I used to think they had enough to contend with with Grumpy and Big Al and Big Alice without getting sleestax on top of it. Definitely one of the better of the Sid & Marty Krofft shows, if not the best, better than Pufnstuf. The show may have held on if Spencer Mulligan, as Dad, had not left. It wasn't the same show.

We ordered this on Netflix for our 8 year old who loves dinosaurs. He loved it just as much as we did, back in the day. My nine year old daughter liked it too. Tried doing a lookup on the main character actors - doesn't seem they did much in the way of movies or TV after the show. Can't believe we made our parents watch this - love the special effects now ... how the three of them are in a raft and the size of the river looks to be about 8 inches across, and the bricks slam down on it, then they're in the same jungle scene time after time, and its always dusty ... :D Didn't know that Walter Koenig wrote an episode - his commentary is on the Disc 1 features - kind of funny to here him without a Slovak accent. Brings back some nice memories.

The Land of the Lost was an excellent science fiction series-- especially given that it aired on a Saturday morning. Granted, the third season wasn't as good as the first two, with writers ignoring much of the internal logic that had previously been established, but even the third season was better than much of the Saturday morning fare today.

To clear up some misconceptions about the series, the Marshall family did not travel back in time; they fell through a time doorway which transported them to a small, closed universe, which included, among other things, three moons in the sky. In this small universe, a balance was maintained. In order for anyone to enter, the same number of people had to leave (and vice versa).

The presence of the dinosaurs (one of the attractions of the show for many) may be why people think the Marshalls went to Earth's past. But other features, such as the Lost City and the pylons, which TARDIS-like are bigger on the inside than the outside, are signs of a highly advanced culture; one, which we later learn, built the Land of the Lost. The pylons controlled the environment of the land, and some contained time doorways leading to other dimensions.

Oh, and for the record, the dinosaur named "Alice" is called that because she's an allosaur. It's a nickname.

There was a later version of Land of the Lost in 1992, and while it had better effects and slightly better acting, the original was "Masterpiece Theatre" by comparison. While the original Land of the Lost does have some flaws, it at least had interesting scripts and looked like it was another world; and it had a certain quality to it that the remake-- which was filmed in some park-- lacked.

There are currently eight episodes available on video, with four of them re-released to DVD. Like I said, the Land of the Lost isn't perfect (though many of the eight episodes available are considered among the better ones, especially "The Stranger", "Elsewhen" and my personal favorite, "Circle") but it's better than a lot of the stuff on today.

Rick